Public Economics Commons^™

Fiscal Decentralization, Foreign Capital, And Economic Development In Sub-Saharan Africa, Kwadwo D. Frempong

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa has been shaped by two transformative policy shifts: widespread fiscal decentralization reforms transferring revenue and expenditure authority to subnational governments, and the pursuit of foreign direct investment to supplement domestic capital. Despite the breadth of these reforms, their effectiveness in promoting sustainable economic development remains empirically contested. This dissertation examines three interconnected questions about fiscal governance and capital flows in Sub-Saharan Africa: what determines the extent to which governments decentralize fiscal authority; how county fiscal composition and revenue autonomy shape subnational economic performance; and how foreign direct investment interacts with domestic investment and growth.

The …

Where Does The Money Go? Three Essays On Intergovernmental Transfers, Spending, And Poverty In Indonesia, Jacobus Cd Rijoly

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Indonesia allocates substantial intergovernmental transfers to local governments; nonetheless, the decrease in poverty remains limited. This dissertation posits that the binding constraint is institutional, specifically the regulations and incentives that dictate the extent to which funds are allocated from the government to designated programs. Institutional pass-through refers to the fraction of a transfer that is allocated to a program expenditure. The three essays integrate estimation, budget composition evidence, and a formal model to explain both modest average effects and heterogeneity across regions and programs.

The first essay evaluates the impact of transfers on provincial poverty from 2001 to 2022 by …

Essays On The Dynamics Of Subnational Public Finance In Indonesia, Much Rosidi

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation comprises three essays that collectively explore the intricacies of subnational public finance in Indonesia: vehicle tax amnesty, property tax competition, and corruption. The research aims to understand the dynamics shaping fiscal policies at the subnational level.

In the first essay, I examine vehicle tax amnesty programs in Indonesia that have been very popular in dealing with high delinquency rates. From 2008 to 2020, provincial amnesties occurred every 2.5 years on average. Using the variation in the timing of the province’s amnesty adoptions, I estimate the effect of vehicle tax amnesty on vehicle tax revenue using difference-in-differences. The short-run …

Relationships Between Local Revenue And Expenditure Policies And Urban Housing Markets, Lucas Taulbee

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation consists of three essays on urban/local public finance, specifically residential property tax assessment and the provision of local public services. A general theme of the essays is the interplay between local financial policies and housing markets. Both revenue (tax) and expenditure policies can have significant effects on housing prices which can, in turn, have feedback effects on current and future revenues and expenditures. In the first chapter, Assessment Regressivity and Capitalization of Property Taxes, I consider assessment regressivity, the phenomenon in which higher-priced homes tend to be underassessed while lower priced homes tend to be overassessed. This may …

A Multilevel Jurisdictional Analysis Of The Impact Of Walmart On Host Communities, Matt Young

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This research takes a holistic approach to answer the empirical question about what impacts Walmart has on host jurisdictions. This consists of a thorough review of the extant literature; a formalization of Walmart’s potential impact into a theoretical framework; a consideration of endogeneity within Walmart’s operations from multiple angles; a nationwide analysis of impacts on labor and retail markets at both the county and municipal level; a nationwide analysis of the impacts on housing prices and property tax revenue post Walmart; a multistate analysis of host jurisdictions’ reactions to these changes through the lens of local sales taxes; finally, a …

Three Essays On Consumption Taxation In Indonesia, Partomuan Transparenter Juniult

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Consumption taxes play a major role in revenue generation for many developing countries. They are also used to encourage or discourage certain consumption behaviors. However, the administrative aspects of implementing these taxes can create challenges for the tax authorities, and lead to distortions in taxpayer behavior. To overcome these challenges, efforts have been made to simplify policies and utilize technology to improve administration and compliance. My dissertation aims to provide empirical evidence on the effects of three consumption or commodity tax policy reforms in Indonesia. The dissertation consists of three essays as follows.

In my first essay, titled “The effect …

Three Essays On Tax Compliance In Indonesia, Himawan Saputro

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation studies the impacts of major tax reforms designed to improve tax compliance, particularly in the context of developing countries with limited enforcement capacity due to informality and lack of third-party data using the Indonesian tax administrative data as well as relevant empirical research methods. In order to describe this dissertation, I discuss each essay as the following.

The first essay is titled "How Do Small Taxpayers Respond to Tax Simplification? Evidence from the Indonesian Turnover Tax Reform." This essay studies the firms' behavioral responses to tax simplification in Indonesia by exploiting the implementation of turnover tax in 2013 …

Essays On Evasion And Enforcement In Value Added Tax (Vat), Syed Jawad Ali Shah

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

Value added tax (VAT) based on credit invoice system is the most common consumption tax in the world. Despite its self-regulating nature, VAT faces challenges in developing countries who have limited state capacity to check evasion and enforce tax on informal sectors of the economy. The tax authorities introduce policy interventions that can target the evasive behavior of firms interacting with informal sectors. My dissertation seeks to provide insight into three such policy reforms in Pakistan’s VAT regime. Therefore, this dissertation is composed of three essays.

In first essay of my dissertation, titled “Using Computerization to enforce VAT: Evidence from …

Home Rule, Local Autonomy, And Municipal Government Behavior, Xin Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation focuses on relationships between state and local governments. Of particular interest in this project is how the shift of power from the state to local governments changes local governments’ performance. This dissertation is comprised of four chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces the motivation and organization of the dissertation. The second chapter reviews the three state-imposed fiscal institutions—home rule, debt limitations, and tax and expenditure limitations, across states. While previous studies have looked at specific institutions, few studies have comprehensively reviewed the status of those institutions across states. This chapter attempts to fill this gap by comprehensively scrutinizing …

The Effects Of Natural Resource Dependence And Democracy On The Incremental Budgeting Theory And Punctuated Equilibrium Within A Budgetary Context, Barrak Ghanim Algharabali

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

I contribute to the literature by providing additional factors that could affect the incremental budgeting theory and punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) within a budgetary context. Because of the fluctuation in the price of natural resources, I argue that dependence on natural resources could lead to less stable budgets than ones not dependent on natural resources. I also argue that democracy is another source that leads to stability in the budget, relative to countries that are not democratic. I theorize that countries with no democracy and heavy dependence on natural resources will have budgets with more volatility than the rest of …

Three Essays On Public Finance And Public Policy: Financial Disclosure And Policy Reinvention In U.S. State And Local Governments, Jinhai Yu

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay, or Chapter 2, advances the literature by examining the conditional effects of lobbying on the relationship between policy learning and policy reinvention. Scholars have consistently shown that learning of successful policies in other states leads to higher likelihood of policy adoption. This essay extends this finding two ways. First, policy learning can also lead to more comprehensive adoption of successful policies. Second, the effect of policy learning on policy comprehensiveness is conditional on lobbying by interest groups, an alternative source of information about policy success. To test these hypotheses, I conduct …

Three Essays On Local Public Finance, Thomas Daniel Woodbury

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

This dissertation seeks to develop the subject of local public finance in a manner consistent with the political economy of local governments. For ease of description, each essay will be discussed briefly.

The first essay is titled "The Provision of Generalized Local Public Goods Financed by Distortionary Taxation." This essay models the provision of a local public good that is simultaneously utilized as a public consumption good and a public intermediate good. Since the public good can simultaneously enter both utility and production functions, it is considered a "generalized public good." This is done to model the provision of infrastructure …

Three Essays On Local Government Debt, Robert Greer

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

The local government tax-exempt debt market is a growing, and complex, sector of public finance. As local governments turn to debt financing the factors that contribute to interest costs of that debt have become important considerations for local government officials and politicians. Governance at the local level involves a network of overlapping governments some of which share a tax base. This system of overlapping governments that share a tax base are subject to externalities that arise from taxation, expenditures, and debt. These externalities are usually analyzed in terms of tax or expenditure reactions, but there are implications for local government …

Voter Ideology, Tax Exporting, And State And Local Tax Structure, John M. Foster

Theses and Dissertations--Public Policy and Administration

State and local governments play an important role in financing and delivering public services in the United States. In 2008, state and local governments collected 57 percent of total federal, state, and local revenue (Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, Tax Policy Center, 2009). The decentralization of fiscal responsibility has enabled a high degree of variation in state and local tax structures to emerge. This dissertation presents two empirical studies that extend the positive literature on state and local tax policy.

The extant literature contains evidence of a direct relationship between voter ideology and state and local tax progressivity. However, the …